As a child and teenager, I watched my mother suffer through decades of extreme hormonal imbalance at a very young age. She survived breast cancer at age forty–but it wasn’t the typical estrogen-triggered cancer. Hers was from having too much progesterone, yet no one would risk giving her any estrogen. Only when she started taking estrogenic things like flax seed oil did her symptoms ease. She lived another thirty-eight years despite having been so gaslit by her doctor that by the time she addressed the breast cancer it was already a likely death sentence.
I learned early on that we must manage our own hormones, because we can’t count on mainstream medicine to get it right. My 1998 TBI also damaged my hypothalamus gland, so I’ve been aware of the endocrine system as a system since I was twenty-five years old. Sooooo many of the weirdest and seemingly unrelated symptoms can stem from perimenopausal hormone chaos. Foot pain, vision changes, cardiovascular issues, brain fog, migraines, joint pain, stress fractures, insomnia, urgent bladder, crying jags, angry outbursts, inability to “find nouns,” panic attacks, dry skin, weight gain or weight loss: perimenopausal shifts affect way more than cycle length, pimples, cramps, and period volume.
This is one of the best conversations I’ve ever heard or read about perimenopause and menopause. I love the empowering message here, and they are chock full of excellent information. A must-watch for any woman over thirty. (If you’re receiving this by email, you’ll need to click through to view the video.)
This is not medical advice from me, but I like the company Femmenesence for a natural approach. They offer several specific strains of maca, in order to support fertility, perimenopause, or full menopause. They have healthcare staff available to help determine which type of maca to use and personalized dosage. I didn’t realize that they also offer an entirely plant-based melatonin, as well as Himalayan sea salt for sole.
Those of you interested in the metaphysical aspects of perimenopause and menopause, might want to check out my Black Moon Lilith video if you haven’t already. Since Black Moon Lilith deals with all sorts of gynecological issues plus narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, and feeling disrespected, she often rears her head in midlife and beyond. I also created The Second Chakra Healing Journal as extra support for people dealing with any of these issues. If you want more personalized insights, please contact me to book a session.
Long time blog reader and magical being Nikkoale sent this video to me by private email, and I knew I would share it here.
On this day of Sun in Taurus exactly square Pluto in Aquarius, just on the heels of yesterday’s Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, also in Taurus, with Venus (love) exactly conjunct Chiron (wound/wounded healer) in Aries, this animated music video evokes humanity’s ongoing shift. For some people, this change involves deep shadow work and breaking free of trauma, brainwashing, and peer pressure. For others, it involves stepping more fully into empowerment and having courage to forge pathways for others.
I found “KINGDOM” both intense and cathartic. If nitty-gritty astro lingo leaves you scratching your head, this one pulls right at the heart and soul. These challenging times have such potential! My fingers wanted to type poet-ential, and I feel and sense that, too. We were born for this.
If receiving this by email, you’ll need to click through to view the animated short film–just under 14 minutes, but a journey in itself.
I continue to receive a lot of private condolence messages, as well as people asking if I’m back to doing phone sessions. Thank you for the condolences, and the answer is, “Yes, I am back to doing phone sessions.”
I took off eleven days during my PA visit and to allow for a transition back home. As I explained in my earlier post about Momma Jane’s passing, I have been privately preparing for this outcome since I foresaw the trajectory in May 2022. That’s a long time to have mourned what I could not openly discuss since the outward “evidence” seemed to indicate otherwise. I did what I could to change her trajectory, but I was blocked at every turn. It is what it is, and I was well prepared for her transition.
I have a VERY different relationship with dying, death, and the dead. Because of my precognitive dreams, astrological awareness, and the ability to communicate in unusual ways, I often experience things backwards. While others may not comprehend how this could be, it has been my experience since age three when my best friend Grandpa Frank died.
There are also many details that I cannot publicly share, and for these and other reasons, I feel very much at peace with Momma Jane’s passing. We gave her a beautiful send off to the other realm, and a beautiful memorial service. Her death marked the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new one for all of us. Thank you for your concern, but at this point, I primarily feel relief. Relief that she is no longer suffering. Relief that I’m not crazy for having so many dreams, plus astrological and intuitive downloads about her passing, and relief that the reality I’ve been living with for nineteen months is now obvious to everyone else.
My “gifts” help a lot of people and allow me to navigate life in unusual, but supportive ways. They also greatly complicate my life and relationships when I “see” and “know” things in advance that seem impossible to ordinary comprehension.
I did not have a normal mother-daughter relationship, and I’m not a normal person. Despite some people assuming otherwise, doing sessions is not “too much” right now. I’ve been doing sessions for almost two years while privately processing ALL of this and much more. If anything, a large weight has lifted, and now that she has passed, real healing has quickly taken root.
I don’t expect everyone to understand this, but it is and has been my reality. I appreciate the compassion, but please at least consider that I have a much different way and timing of processing information. When I share something in a public way, it means I’ve already explored, dreamed, processed, prayed, and discerned it until I feel unshakeable by anyone else’s expectations, projections, or reactions. I have a very complicated way of navigating multiple layers of reality, but it works for me.
Thank you for all the love. My inner process is finely honed, and I have a very good and very carefully selected private support team–including both humans and, primarily, my “Dream Guys.” They continue to amaze me in the level of care, preparation, and uncannily accurate advice. I could not have gotten this far in life without their constant nagging and intervention. Much love to all …
Some of you know that my owl-loving mother, affectionately known on this blog as “Momma Jane,” had been in final stages of life. Thank you to everyone who’s been sending Reiki and prayers my family’s way. We definitely feel them!
Momma Jane had been non-responsive since a brief moment of telling my siblings that she loved all of us. I continued giving a lot of remote energy support and had an all-night telepathic conversation with her last Friday (February 3rd) when she came to me to discuss her options. For some unknown reason–which later became clear–I had received many dreams telling me NOT to go to PA, just to do remote work since I could have more lucid conversations with her on the spiritual plane than the physical one.
But this past Tuesday morning, I awoke with very clear instructions to book my flight.
I found the last seat on the only direct flight available from Grand Rapids to Philadelphia and got to PA Thursday evening. My local sister Erica picked me up at the airport, and we went right to hospice, where I visited and gave her Reiki. Our Aunt Gail, who’s closer in age to me than she is to my mom (her half-sister) took a red eye and arrived Friday morning. Erica and I returned to hospice, and I started up the Reiki again.
Our brother Craig has spent quite a lot of time in Bethlehem dealing with hospital protocols, logistics, etc. He had just arranged transfer to the hospice facility, which allowed 24-7 visiting. Our mom had been silent, limp, and non-responsive for about a week, but on Friday, after some in-person Reiki over her throat to assist with labored breathing, she woke up enough to realize that Gail and I were there. We asked if she was in pain, and she said, “No.” At one point, she looked at Gail and said, “I love you.”
A bit later, she got restless, and I asked, “Mom, what do you need?” I was gently holding her hand, but she opened her eyes wide and looked right into my eyes. She grabbed my hand very firmly and lifted our hands into the air. In a strong voice she said, “Laura!” and held tight to my hand for a long time. To my knowledge this was her last conscious moment, and she drifted back to sleep. She held my hand so tightly that Craig eventually had to help separate our hands so that Gail and I could get some rest.
We returned the next morning, but the staff told us she hadn’t even responded when they cleaned her and turned her over. We knew it would be soon, but took time to attend a nearby track event where my nephew Anthony (Erica’s son) ran his personal record as the anchor of a relay race in State Quarter Finals. In the past month or so, I’ve had some “random” dreams about a relay race and the handing over of a baton. While sitting in the stands, I realized that soooo many “random” dream symbols had all pointed to this time. The inexplicable dream symbols kept appearing in waking life once I got here.
We visited some after Anthony’s event, and as we got in our cars, Craig texted to say that the hospice workers didn’t think she would last the afternoon. This tracked with my own sense when I wrote the February Forecast that she would likely check out around the time of the New Moon. If not then, I knew of several other major impact transits making it very likely she would pass on or before the April 8th eclipse. That would have been one day after her 79th birthday.
Erica, Craig, Gail and I were all with her as she passed. We held hands and also laid hands on Momma Jane. A classical music station played in the background, and after awhile, Gail jumped up and said, “I need to turn off that music.” As soon as she did, Momma Jane released her final breath. “When the music stops.” I continued Reiki on her heart until it stopped beating, just as I did when David, my mom and I witnessed my father’s death in 2016. It was a sacred moment.
Relay symbolism kept appearing. At the end of my flight out here, the woman next to me asked if I lived in Philly. I said, “No,” and she asked why I was here. I told her about my mom, and she shared that she was on the way to London for the birth of her second granddaughter. I said, “Cycle of life. Death, birth.” Then, as soon as my mom passed, one of Gail’s friends texted photos of her newborn granddaughter. Again, death, life.
Turning off the music alerted us to a woman playing the harp in the hospice lobby. Soft waves of harp music wafted through the air as Mom’s heart wound down.
Some other perfect synchronicities occurred. Mom and her siblings spent “a miracle trip” in Banff, Canada for my Aunt Sue’s 80th birthday this past July. They all saw each other before Mark and my mom rapidly declined.
L-R: Mark, Gail, Momma Jane, Sue and John
On October 2, my mom’s younger brother Mark passed, and his death hit hard. Yesterday, both Gail and Sue kept sensing Mark’s presence. Gail wanted to post a photo of my mom from the Banff trip, but “Mark Palmer” notifications kept showing up until she realized, “OK, Mark, you want to be in this photo, too.” She shared a picture with Mark and Jane. Once Mom passed, Gail realized, “Mark died on 10/2, and Jane died on 2/10.”
My Aunt Sue got the sense of Mark acting as a welcome guide once she crossed over. About a half hour after she passed, I suddenly felt her having a HUGE reunion with loved ones on the other side. Those who knew my mom know how social she was. I felt her soaring with joy to reconnect with those she hadn’t seen in a long time, and some she had recently lost.
Then, in the wee hours of the morning, Momma Jane stopped by. Gail and I are staying in her 2BR apartment. All of a sudden, something started flashing in the corner of the room, waking me up. When it continued flashing, I got up from bed to look. Mom’s iPad, which had been covered and turned off, had somehow turned itself on, with the cover pulled halfway back. A notification said that activating facial recognition upon startup required a password.
I told Gail that story this morning, and Gail wondered if maybe it was “just an automatic update.” I said, “Well, maybe, but I don’t think so. That still doesn’t explain how the cover pulled itself halfway back in the middle of the night.” As we discussed this, Gail mentioned that we might need to water Mom’s plants. (I got my green thumb from her.) The lights in the kitchen started flickering fast right then, and we agreed, “That’s Momma Jane! And last night was, too.”
While this death announcement may sound shocking, please know that I have been actively processing and grieving this time period since May 2022. Some things shifted with her medical care at that time, and I dreamed of my mother falling through a crack, with me trying to save her. I grabbed her hand but no matter what I did, I couldn’t pull her out. In waking life, I tried everything I could–hoping it was a warning dream, rather than a fixed premonition–but I was cosmically blocked from doing more for her.
After visiting her on Friday, Gail and I returned to her apartment, and I did yoga. At the end, I lay down in savasana, and I was soooo blissed out. I kept breathing in a shallow little breath, and then exhaling long, long, long and slow. Then I would forget to inhale. This happened until I was almost out of my body on the exhales.
Keep in mind, I LOVE the feeling of being on the other side of the veil. I love the feeling of being dead. I was breathing out, out, out and forgetting to breathe in, and then the farthest away voice, maybe from my body, said, “Savasana is also called the corpse pose.”
I realized, “Oh my God, I’m DYING for my mom. I like dying, but I’m not supposed to die now. SHE’S dying. I’m not supposed to stop her from dying. The only way I could stop her from dying is to die myself and I’m not supposed to die yet.”
In that moment, I realized that she and I are so linked that I needed not to be in physical proximity, because I would have done everything–including transfering my own life force energy to her so that she could live. It felt so natural that I didn’t even notice until a little, childlike voice said, “Savasana is also called the corpse pose.” Then everything about the past nineteen months clicked into place.
It was her time to go. I knew the transits that she, my sister and I all have–including all three of us having Pluto (planet of death and rebirth) conjunct Moon (mother, physical body, childhood home) right now. My natal Moon is 1 Aquarius, Erica’s is 5 Aquarius, and Mom’s at 8 Aquarius. The odds of our mother not dying when both daughters have Pluto conjunct Moon were slim, especially given Mom’s other Pluto and Chiron transits. She would have needed either a massive, total inner and outer transformation, or she would die.
She has always processed a lot in her sleep, and I wondered if she could “Rip Van Winkle” her way through such difficult transits–make the changes in dreamtime. That was the last hope of a possible recovery.
Like me, our mother didn’t fear death. On several occasions over the years, she told me that every night before falling asleep, she said a prayer making peace with God and acknowledging that He could take her anytime. She wanted to pass peacefully in her sleep, and that’s exactly what she did–with all three kids and her youngest sister offering love and wishing her bon voyage. She transitioned under a Bible verse blanket I felt called to send her a couple weeks ago. I thought she would love to be literally “covered in the Word of God.” Here she is on the day that it arrived, right before we FaceTimed:
The blanket became a talking point for many who visited her–bringing comfort and reminding them of our mom’s deep faith. We plan to bury her with this blanket that covered her long, slow sleep. We’re still confirming dates for a viewing and memorial service, but we hope it will be at Grace Church in Bethlehem next Friday and Saturday. If you’re local and want to attend, please feel free to contact me so I can confirm the timing and location(s).
The memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, February 16th at Grace Church of Bethlehem. We’ll have a luncheon at noon. Obituary to follow once my brother finishes writing it. He did such a great job on our dad’s obituary that we gave him full license for this one.
Fly free, Momma Jane! You will be missed by so many whose lives you touched.
I began reading “We Met on the Other Side: A True Love Story” as research for my own writing project, but Scarlett Heinbuch’s storytelling cast a spell. This book tells the true story of a shared near-death experience (NDE) with a stranger who later became her husband. It reads like a Tricia O’Malley Mystic Cove romance novel where each heroine has an intuitive, healing or artistic gift that leads her to find her perfect match–except it’s all true.
Scarlett was a single mom struggling to support two sons with special needs, while finishing her PhD and teaching college classes to make ends meet. On Fall Equinox 2005, she attended a fateful AA recovery meeting where she met the mother of David Schwartz. All her friends seemed to know and love David, but Scarlett had never met him. Listening to his mother’s plea for prayers touched Scarlett’s heart. In addition to her doctoral studies, she’s also a Reiki Master Teacher and uses affirmative prayer with laying on of hands. Scarlett felt compelled to offer her services for David, who lay in an unresponsive coma with all systems shutting down. Doctors expected him to die that night.
He survived until the next day, so Scarlett made her way to the hospital. As anyone who does alternative healing work knows, mainsteam medicine often looks on energy healing with suspicion. Scarlett persevered day after dedicated day, and the miraculous results opened many hearts and minds. In the course of treatment, Scarlett left her body and found herself in a realm of pure love, holding hands with this “stranger,” and realizing she knew and loved him with all her soul.
A review can’t do justice to the beauty and wisdom of this book. Reading it softens the heart and brings the reader along for Scarlett and David’s wild emotional ride. Throughout the text, Scarlett recounts lessons from the class on Marriage and Family that she happened to be teaching during this entire journey. As students discuss her questions and Scarlett ponders her own answers, readers can’t help considering the same issues for themselves. We join her and David in their dance of intimacy–all the longing, recognition and insecurities triggered by such a paranormal connection.
As a Reiki Master Teacher, I know how difficult it can be to explain how Reiki feels and how it flows. From now on I will recommend “We Met on the Other Side” to every Reiki student, because Scarlett offers the best description I’ve found of both giving and receiving Reiki. She receives her own profound Reiki session, and she also demonstrates how a Reiki practitioner changes and heals through the Reiki flowing to someone else. Her narration is so good that it doesn’t even feel like a description. We’re right there with her.
“We Met on the Other Side: A True Love Story” was originally published as “Waking Up to Love,” but this second edition explores Scarlett’s own NDE when she drowned in childhood. In the first edition, she hadn’t yet connected the two experiences. She now realizes that her early childhood brush with death opened her to a lifetime of psychic experiences and healing gifts. In the second edition, David also shares his feelings and memories in an Epilogue. A Foreword by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, author of “Beyond Death” and “The Supreme Victory of the Heart” offers additional context for such incredible experiences. An Afterword by Dr. Charles H. Webb validates the miraculous nature of David’s recovery.
Scarlett also includes recommended prayers for healing–ones she said during David’s recovery. As synchronicity would have it, today (December 16, 2023) marks David’s eighteenth birthday since Reiki, prayer and true love brought him back from the Other Side. If the crazy state of our world has rocked your faith, this beautiful book will bring you back to love. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Available on Amazon.
I’m not sure why I feel led to share this one. It had a collective component, but also a specific message for me. Perhaps it will speak to others, too. Once I post the Scorpio New Moon video, you’ll recognize some common elements, but I present it here without further interpretation.
UPDATE: I realized after the fact that it’s a cannon, not a horn in Mary Poppins, but in my dream the Mary Poppins reference was a horn. I wonder if that’s more of an emphasis on “announcement” than “attack.”
11/8/2023
“Protection from Storms”
Before falling asleep, I asked for clear guidance about ___. I dreamed I was (2:22 a.m. right now) temporally staying on the Carolina coast. I’m not sure if it was North or South Carolina, but it was far out on the coast and approaching hurricane season.
I stayed in a home that looked sort of like a Frank Lloyd Wright cantilever home. It had the different layers jutting far out, and the home stood on a narrow island or peninsula. It was way out there—beautiful most of the time, but very dangerous during hurricane season.
I was starting to get used to the strange habits of the other people, including the owners of this property. They had the energy of how in Mary Poppins, everyone needs to hurry around to accommodate the huge boom from the neighbors who blast the ship horn from their roof as though they lived on a big ship. This horn shakes the whole neighborhood, and all the women grab the dishes and other fragile items to stabilize them.
In the movie, this is a known, expected event, and the people are so well practiced that they all jump into place at the countdown, then carry on with normal life. It happens over and over throughout the movie to the point of absurdity. That’s how this next situation was at the beach house.
My room had some kind of large wooden balcony that I could access from the room. Others had access to this same large balcony from their rooms, like we could all walk right outside to this shared space—a square balcony, maybe 100’x100’.
Way high above—almost too high to see, but we knew they were there—a three-layer set of huge umbrellas protected us from the sky. These were three distinct, joined layers of different heights, and each layer had multiple beach umbrellas, except much larger. They looked normal size from the balcony, but when you factored in how far away they were, these must have been enormous umbrellas.
Periodically, depending on the actual weather forecast, not just what the newscasters said, the umbrella system would change direction and location. This involved a loud, cranking contraption underneath the floorboards. I don’t know mechanics, but it was some kind of elliptical metal gear type thing that would be manually cranked by someone in anticipation of whatever storms could hit this house on the sea.
The contraption was massive, and we never quite saw whoever cranked it. I saw the contraption, but I think that was using psychic skills to see through the floorboards. The contraption wasn’t visible to the naked eye, and it stretched under the entire top layer of the home. It was manually cranked, so whoever did this must have been hugely powerful. We never met one of the homeowners. We just heard about him and assumed he was the one so proactively turning the contraption.
The cranking noise was loud, and it made the house rumble and shake, but unlikely though it seemed, the house always survived any hurricane. Sometimes the weather was so high up that it didn’t make any sense in the house why the mechanism was being cranked, but then the three tiers of umbrellas would move from one side of the house to the other, covering a similar large, wooden balcony on the other side.
We couldn’t see any reason for all this cranking noise and shaking, but since the house never had bad weather, we had to accept and assume that this contraption had some kind of purpose. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous to have all that fuss when nothing happened, but the fact that this house could be so far out on the sea and NEVER have storm damage or even really bad weather, made you accept the eccentricity.
This continued for many rounds until I was almost used to it, just like the women in Mary Poppins who jumped up to stabilize all the plates when the Captain was about to blow his horn. I started feeling like maybe we didn’t even need to worry about storms, because we never saw much of them due to the mechanism. Some rain would get in, but the umbrellas could also tip, so for the most part, we had clear weather all the time, despite all the rumbling and shaking.
Then one day, seemingly out of nowhere, a huge storm approached. This seemed bigger and darker and lower than the umbrellas could handle. We were told to go inside and wait it out. When the storm eventually passed, we exited the house on ground level. Looking around, a hurricane had very obviously passed through the area, but the house itself was untouched.
A neighboring tree had fallen over in the wind or gotten struck by lighting. The cause of the fall wasn’t clear, but this tree had a huge trunk and had fallen right by the house. Upon closer inspection, the tree “should” have destroyed the portion of the house where I stayed—my guest bedroom was in direct line of this tree, except the tree had miraculously just missed the house.
At first this seemed like, “Wow, what are the odds?” Upon even closer inspection, I could see that it wasn’t just the trunk that missed the house. All the branches of the tree that could have hit the house peeled back so that nothing even slightly scratched the house. It looked like a force field had repelled any part of the tree from harming the house at all. The branches contorted at odd, unnatural angles that prevented even the tiniest twigs from touching the house.
The tree would still need to be cleaned up, and this would be a large project. The trunk was enormous, and would need many cuts in order to haul it away. All those branches would need to be sawed off, too, and this process needed to be delicate since they were SO close to the house, especially all the windows that gave good views.
But the scene very clearly showed some kind of Divine or magical protection of the house, and in particular, my area of the house. By all normal events, this tree should have demolished the entire room where I had stayed during the storm. The tree was large enough to have taken down most of the house, but it “should” have been a direct hit on my room and by extension on me.
Instead, the owners of the home would call an arborist. We might need to wait awhile since arborists were busy from all the downed trees everywhere, plus there were downed power lines and still many flooded areas. But our house, and in particular my room of the house, stood completely unscathed.
Seeing how the branches peeled away from the house so as not to hit it, you could only marvel that some kind of supernatural event had occurred. There was nothing natural to account for those peeled away branches, even if you tried to convince yourself that the tree’s enormous trunk fell just right not to hit the house. I felt stunned, but the protection was way too obvious to deny.
I continue to hear from many of you commenting how “surreal,” bizarre, intense, yet magical things seem right now. For those of you wondering, yes, a LOT of other people are feeling it and experiencing these things–both the intensity and the sliver of new potential beginning to reveal itself for those with eyes to see.
On Sunday morning, I had a dream that featured three owls and multiple timelines as an ongoing theme. The day proceeded to illustrate and reflect just that. No matter how much I might feel obligated or try to assist, I have–apparently–been banned from participating in the most negative timeline. Although it will still have challenges, my timeline has VERY strict parameters. I seem unable to step off this trajectory even for a moment. After awhile, the obvious message became surreal and even comical.
I know a lot of people feel this tension right now, and I’m reminded of something I mentioned in the Pluto Direct video with Timothy Glenn. We spoke of the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and how the temptation arises to “help” the butterfly by freeing it from the cocoon. The problem is that the butterfly needs this struggle in order to strengthen its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly will die.
Much of humanity appears to be in this chrysalis phase right now, and those with compassionate hearts want to help. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is practice tough love, healthy boundaries, and allow others to step into a stronger supporting role. This allows EVERYONE a chance to level up, while freeing you to anchor more joyful energies and future expansion. Along with a sendoff of the past, the future burst through so many times–an absurd contrast in vibration, insisting on Beauty as a driving principle.
In any case, David and I had one of the most beautiful weekends we’ve had. Instead of taking our usual late October trip to Traverse City, we chose a staycation in the Kalamazoo area. We took long fall foliage drives on Saturday and Sunday:
… and David discovered an art festival we had never known about before.
We visited many local artists in their studios and community art spaces. Lovely connections were made, and at our last stop, the artist insisted we look at her huge patch of fly agaric mushrooms!
The Faery Realm is sprouting up in magical ways. The artist shared that she had never seen so many or such large specimins of this quintessential faery mushroom:
The intellect says: “The six directions are limits: there is no way out.” Love says: “There is a way. I have traveled it thousands of times.” The intellect saw a market and started to haggle; Love saw thousands of markets beyond that market.
That portal reverberated through life around the time of my father’s passing. Its quote, the mushrooms and the intention of finding a graceful way through an impossible situation feel extra potent right now.
David and I collected some delightful new art for our home–mostly glass and pottery that play with light in joyful colors and forms. I will feel forever grateful for this weekend of poignant contrast and overwhelming beauty. These are challenging but amazing times to be alive!
UPDATE: Later on the afternoon of this post, David called me to our backyard. I counted thirteen fly agarics under our evergreens. Faeries are active these days!
My front garden’s soil needs more nitrogen after harvesting garlic and lots of greens, but I kind of like having mini sunflowers. They don’t need stakes, and they give surprising pops of color.
I don’t have a photo of this, but yesterday I found another frog!
In August 2022, I lost my sweet frog friend who had managed the bugs for me for at least two garden seasons. It was my fault–a terrible accident, which felt even worse because I didn’t discover it until a few days later. I was DEVASTATED to lose my frog friend last year. I buried him in the garden, but I mourned that little guy for so long. It’s one reason I haven’t enjoyed gardening as much this year. The front garden’s just not the same without him. I wondered if I would ever find another frog again since it was my fault he died.
Thirteen months ago, I accidentally dropped the hose on him when he was sleeping in the pot that stores the twirled up hose. I didn’t see him there, because he could camouflage himself by slightly changing color, but something alerted me to lift up the hose. I did, and he moved his leg in what I thought signaled he was fine.
We got some rain so I didn’t water for a few days, and when I did, I found his decomposing body. I cannot even describe how traumatizing and sad this was. I felt so bad that he might have suffered for who knows how long. I sent retroactive Reiki to him and apologized, then buried him in a special place in the garden. I’m tearing up even thirteen months later just thinking about it.
David spent a good while last year trying to convince me that the frog might have died anyway, that I “don’t know the lifespan of frogs.” Maybe I “prevented extra suffering,” or “maybe it was just his time to go.” I said I didn’t think I deserved another frog in my garden since I loved this one so much and had accidentally killed him. David assured me I would find another frog at some point, that I was being too hard on myself, but it still makes me cry to think of that little frog.
I had planned to take a nap yesterday afternoon, which is unusual for me. When I lay down, I got a sudden urge to “go outside and water the front garden–now!” so I did.
Lo and behold, there was a light green frog on my purple kale. This one’s only about half, maybe two-thirds the size of the one who died, but clearly the same species. It felt like the Universe gave me a second chance.
I didn’t intend to share that story here, but I guess it’s time. Such a sweet and helpful little friend. It really does feel like something came full circle. Here’s what I shared about my old friend on August 28, 2021. I see now how the dream and finding the frog foretold an unfolding story:
I found this precious little green tree frog while watering my collard “tree” in the front yard garden.
David and I finished watching La Dulce Vida last night, and I thought this morning’s dream stemmed from the overloaded dreamscape imagery of that film. Everything was magically lit and almost obscenely fertile. The dream also shared that despite scary appearances, things were being carefully monitored in order to avoid the worst disasters. This dream continued an ongoing series of dreams that always emphasize Life even if the dream shows death.
Frogs symbolize fertility, so if felt like a good sign to find this little guy so soon after the dream.
April 5 Sun conjunct Chiron in Aries. Today’s spotlight shines on old wounds to our personal agency, ego, and willpower. People with natal Chiron in Aries will be especially affected, but this point also conjuncts the start of Watergate and is only a few degrees from the US natal Chiron. In that regard, it affects the entire world as current and past wounds in the US continue to spill into other areas around the world. Today is a good day to move beyond codependent behaviors. Have courage to move in whatever direction you know you need to go, regardless of worn out obligations. This is “me first” energy that reminds us to tend to our inner wounds so that we stop passing along victim/abuser patterns and repression. Practice kindness, and realize that people around you might feel extra raw or extra vocal about their own healing today.
April 6 Full Moon in Libra, 12:34 a.m. Eastern US time, and Mercury conjunct North Node. This Full Moon in Libra opposes Jupiter and Chiron. Pay attention to healing insights that arise, especially if these deal with money, individuality, partnership, and your desire to forge ahead. Destiny level messages come through. Explore implications, even if the information seems farfetched. The Sabian Symbol for this Full Moon point is: (LIBRA 17°):A RETIRED SEA CAPTAIN WATCHES SHIPS ENTERING AND LEAVING THE HARBOR.KEYNOTE:The capacity to gain an objective and calm understanding of human experiences in which one was once deeply involved.
The Sabian Symbol suggests a liminal time of things coming and going. “A retired sea captain” implies maturity, someone who has “been there, done that,” now waiting for a new phase to begin. He’s finished his job but the new life path has not yet appeared. At this time, he acquires perspective on his entire life.
modified from original chart at astro-seek.com
This Libra Full Moon opposes Jupiter and Chiron in Aries. Chiron sits very close to the exact start of Watergate, and Jupiter sits right on the US natal Chiron. Old and new wounds (Chiron) are up in a big (Jupiter) way. These wounds especially affect the United States. The pending arrest of Donald Trump seems right on time. Questions of political motivation and abuse of power would be up in one way or another, but this particular mix drags up all sorts of Watergate themes. Regardless of the answers to those questions, we’re at that point in a 50-year cycle.
Asteroid Arachne sits at 17+ Aries. In Greek Mythology, Arachne was a mortal woman who became a spider after beating the goddesss Athena/Minerva in a weaving contest. She’s a cautionary tale about challenging the gods. While she seemed to win, it was a Phyrric victory that eventually drove her to suicide. With Arachne in that Jupiter/US natal Chiron/transiting Chiron/Sun/Watergate Chiron mix, the US might find healing from a very sticky web of wounds. Of course, in order to heal, we must first recognize how unhealthy we are.
The Libra Full Moon could expose some ugly truths about our government. In addition to war, wisdom and crafts, Athena is also the patron goddess of democracy. I keep hearing Sir Walter Scott’s quote: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” Most people think this line comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which brings its own associations. Abuse of power is “up” right now, as is a need for healing from damage caused by overreach. Time will tell if democracy–I typed democrazy–will get beaten by a web of lies, or if Athena/democracy will triumph in the end. The question of who plays which role is also “up” right now. Is Athena a “good” figure, or a tyrant/aggressor? Was Arachne wrong to challenge her? Or did she have a valid point?
My video about the relationship angle of this Libra Full Moon explores Arachne as a sympathetic figure. I’ll link that here, once it’s on YouTube. The presence of Arachne adds a lot of nuance, and I sense it playing out in different ways in the collective vs. individuals.
In the Full Moon chart set for Washington D.C., asteroid Achilles in Gemini sits right on the Descendant.What is the Achilles heel? US relationships with known enemies. The US natal chart has a lot of Gemini placements, including Mars and Uranus. At the time of the Full Moon in Libra, a cluster of astro objects converges on US natal triggers.
Continuing a dreamy, liminal feel to April, this Full Moon exactly trines Altjira in Gemini. Altjira is the the aboriginal god of dreamtime. I’ve mentioned Saturn’s sojourn in Pisces as a time when dreams manifest into reality, but this Full Moon trine Altjira emphasizes that even more. Pay extra attention to dreams and messages that arrive around the Full Moon. Mercury the Messenger also conjuncts the North Node (collective destiny point) that day, and the Full Moon’s ruler Venus loosely conjuncts Uranus. This combo summons information from the future–messages that help us create and embody a more beautiful and sustainable timeline.
G!kun||’homdima sits at 17+ Gemini, again, right on the D.C. chart’s Descendant, and very close to the US natal Mars. We’ve covered her before in the Gemini Full Moon post from December 2022. This is a goddess associated with protection. From the Gemini Full Moon post:
The Trans Neptunian Object Altjira sits at 17+ Gemini. Altjira is the Aboriginal God of Dreamtime. The presence of Altjira signals alternate realities, and our ability to cross into Dreamtime in order to find new timelines. The Gemini Full Moon also conjuncts another TNO named for the Namibian mythic character called G!kun||’homdima. Please don’t ask me how to pronounce that one! The language uses clicks and does not easily translate to English. But G!kun||’homdima is a female protector and defender. Her presence amplifies the Mars energy and suggests a defensive rather than aggressive quality to this Moon cycle.
Overall, we find a potent mixture of fighting for alternate realities, Big Dreams, and maturing into this larger concept of reality. Different facets of “mind” come into play. When we harness all that mental energy, we can direct it and create new worlds. The stakes are high, but the rewards become real.
Libra and Gemini are both Air signs, but they cover different things. Gemini brings information, whereas Libra brings Justice. Associated with the balanced scales, Libra embodies Lady Justice. Here’s my Justice portal from June 2020:
Beyond the mundane, something cosmic emerges. Positive timelines are available, especially when we tap into the relationship potential of this Full Moon in Libra. I just posted the video for this Full Moon and relationships. Meanwhile, Blessed Be … and be the blessing! We’re in liminal yet potent times with massive opportunities to heal.
As we approach the monumental shift of Pluto from Capricorn to Aquarius on March 23, 2023, I edited my hour-long conversation with Timothy Glenn into a super accessible 24-minute video. You don’t need to understand astrology in order follow these parts.
This snapshot focuses on the preview period from March 23-June 11, 2023, plus themes for the longer 20-year Pluto in Aquarius transit. The video also includes general information on how to handle Pluto transits. I know not everyone has time or inclination for an hour-long video, and these parts seemed important enough to highlight for a more general audience.
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